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Reading Teacher.
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literacy:
Emerging
Reading-writing
in a
experiences
classroom
kindergarten
Here are five classroom activities, some teacher centered and
some child centered, that develop the beginnings of literacy for 5
year
olds.
Doris
C. Crowell
Alice
J. Kawakami
Jeanette
L. Wong
The Reading
Teacher
November
milk
snack
straws,
napkins,
and
cartons
of
for
time.
1986
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experimental
kindergarten
project.
This study was conducted in a class
room with 25 children and one regular
teacher.
searcher
its course,
During
was
in the classroom
re
one
2 morn
the
second
researcher
was
The
present for the entire morning.
school day was 6 hours long. In addi
tion, the researchers met periodically
after school with the teacher for plan
ning and ongoing evaluation.
The study was conducted at the Ka
mehameha Elementary Education Pro
gram (KEEP), a laboratory school that
has the responsibility
for developing
programs to benefit children from Ha
waiian and part-Hawaiian
families.
This article will describe the literacy
oriented curriculum of this kindergar
ten classroom and a few specific activi
ties that were critical to our effort.
Goals
We began the project with the idea that
kindergarten forms the bridge between
the child centered experiences of home
and preschool and the more academic
demands of elementary
school. With
this in mind, we planned experiences
to help children discover that writing
and
reading
are
natural,
essential,
and
in their environ
enjoyable elements
ment. We wanted the children to de
velop a love of books, an enthusiasm
for reading and writing, and a realiza
tion that there are many ways to com
municate one's ideas. We wanted them
to develop thinking and problem solv
ing strategies so they could face daily
academic challenges
and
confidently
constructively.
This article describes five classroom
activities from our program that ap
peared to facilitate the development of
literacy related behaviors in children.
The first two?the morning message
and reading
stories
aloud ?were
teacher directed. In these, the teacher
the processes of literacy and
modeled
Emerging
them. The
last
sharing, and
set up by
independent reading?were
the teacher to be child centered rather
than teacher directed.
instruction
Teacher directed
The morning message and reading sto
ries aloud were two activities which al
to model
the
lowed
the teacher
these are
processes of literacy. While
time honored activities in kindergarten
classrooms, we extended them tomake
thinking processes more explicit to the
children. Through direct instruction,
we guided and supported students' ac
tive participation at each step. The fol
lowing examples were taken from the
notes of our daily observations.
Morning message
rou
the morning business
During
tine, Mrs. Wong wrote this message as
the class watched
and tried to read
along.
Today isMonday.
An egg hatched! We have
a baby bird!
When
the message had been written,
the class read it aloud as a group, al
though they didn't know the word
Some children
read it as
hatched.
Mrs.
Wong stopped them and
happy.
reread the sentence with happy in
Then
she asked
place of hatched.
whether itmade sense, and many chil
dren said no. Someone suggested that
hatched would make sense because the
sentence was about an egg. Finally,
fluently
they read the entire message
with comprehension.
The message was relevant in that it
information
contained
interesting
in the
about an event that occurred
It was apparent that the
classroom.
children understood the content of the
from the kinds of questions
message
asked
afterwards, among them:
they
"How big is it?" "What color is it?"
"When did it come out?"
literacy: Reading-writing
experiences
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145
Within
this daily activity, the chil
dren practice both listening and read
They use context
ing comprehension.
combined with some word and letter
cues to decode a meaningful message.
As the students began to notice some
of the writing
conventions
that the
teacher used, the function of the mes
sage was extended to include instruc
tion in writing as well as in reading.
This instruction was always in the con
text of the message, which contained
information important to the children.
As the children became aware of spe
cific elements
in the message,
the
teacher followed their lead and elabo
rated on their observations.
For
after
example,
another
message
book.
wrote
it is,
and
drew
an
The Reading
Teacher
November
criteria
that
emerged
were
creasing
and
meaning,
awareness
their
as well
of
as
the
in
vari
eties of written
language. We chose
stories that contained a conflict and a
resolution in order to facilitate the stu
dents' awareness of story structure and
enable them tomake predictions which
could be validated. We also selected
books that provided rich language pat
terns and rhythms that captivated the
children.
These early experiences of reading
the morning message
and listening to
stories read aloud helped children de
velop and sustain positive expectations
about writing and books. These expe
riences helped them become aware of
both the form and the function of liter
ature. They also allowed the children
to interact and jointly approximate ma
ture
communicative
behavior.
1986
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Child centered
literacy experiences
In an environment where functional
reading and writing were modeled
daily, children came to believe that lit
eracy is an integral part of life and that
reading and writing are not isolated
school subjects. They began to regard
literacy skills as highly useful, and
to prac
they welcomed
opportunities
tice
In Mrs.
them.
Wong's
classroom,
her
reading.
Writing
the
Following the morning message,
children were given the opportunity to
write for about 30 minutes each day.
Their efforts ranged from drawings, to
to
drawings with labels or captions,
sentences with invented spelling or re
buses
for unknown
words.
morning
messages.
She
encouraged
Wong
was
always
aware
of
the
not
available.
wrapper.
Sharing
A logical continuation of the infor
mal conversations among the children
was to have them share their writing
with each other. An author's chair
(Graves and Hansen,
1983) was set up
so that children could read their work
aloud to the class and respond to their
peers' comments and questions. The
children commented on the correspon
dence of words and illustrations,
the
a
of
main
observ
idea,
development
ance of logical sequence, use of de
scriptive words, and other conventions
of writing.
Early in the year, the teacher often
had to support the reading by reread
ing each line of the piece after the au
thor had just barely whispered
the
words
that he or she had written.
Questions
Emerging
was
assistance
literacy:
and
comments
Reading-writing
from
an
experiences
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ap
147
have
question.
Is He-Man's
picture
example,
Mrs.
Wong
com
mented
on
the board
as a reference.
The Reading
Teacher
November
Mrs.
while
independently
Wong
worked with other writers who were
finishing and preparing to share. Dur
time, students
ing this independent
clustered in groups, reading and talk
ing about books that the teacher had
read aloud to the class. Often a group
of two or three huddled around a book
that they had heard and jointly told the
story by recounting catchy phrases or
recognizing them in print. As the chil
dren began publishing
their own sto
ries, these books were added to the
classroom library.
During one period of observation,
Clarissa sat reading through a stack of
books that she had written and pub
lished. Dennis thumbed through Mar
vin K. Mooney Will You Please Go
Now by Dr. Seuss (1972). Anne told a
story and showed the pictures of the
book The Story about Ping
(Flack,
1933) to an imaginary audience. Es
took turns reading
ther and Kapua
Harry the Dirty Dog (Zion, 1956).
It became
that
apparent midyear
their
literacy experiences
through
many children were developing a core
as well as
of frequent sight words,
for interpreting meaning
strategies
from illustrations. In response to this
observation,
we
introduced
a collec
1986
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appropriately,
turn
pages
one
at
in
Crowell, a curriculum researcher
in Early
the Center for Development
Kamehameha
Schools,
Education,
does applied re
Hawaii,
Honolulu,
search in early literacy and the devel
opment of thinking skills. Kawakami is
an educational specialist in the Kame
curricu
hameha Schools, developing
in early
research
lum and doing
literacy. Wong teaches inKamehameha
Elementary School and does research
in the Center for the Development
of
Early Education.
References
Au, Kathryn H. "Using the Experience-Text-Relationship
Method with Minority Children." The Reading Teacher,
vol. 32 (March 1979), pp. 677-79.
Au, Kathryn H., and Alice J. Kawakami. "Vygotskian Per
inSmall Group
spectives on Discussion Processes
Reading Lessons." InThe Social Context of Instruction,
PL.
edited by
Peterson, L.C Wilkinson, and M. Hal
linan.New York, N.Y.: Academic Press, 1984.
Bridwell, Norman. Clifford Gets a Job. New York, N.Y.:
Scholastic, 1972.
Chandler, EdnaW. Cowboy Andy. New York, N.Y.: Random
House, 1959.
Flack, Marjorie. The Story about Ping. New York, N.Y: Vi
king, 1933.
Gates Reading Tests: Readiness Skills. New York, N.Y:
Teachers College Press, 1968.
Graves, Donald, and Jane Hansen. "The Author's Chair."
Language Arts, vol. 60, no. 2 (1983), pp. 176-83.
McKie, Roy, and Philip D. Eastman. Snow. New York, N.Y:
Random House, 1962.
Rockwell, Anne. Thump, Thump, Thump! New York, N.Y:
Dutton, 1981
Seuss, Dr.Marvin K. Mooney, Will YouPlease Go Now. New
York, N.Y: Random House, 1972
Zion, Gene. Harry the Dirty Dog. New York, N.Y: Harper
and Row, 1956.
on the ability
to read
A story
artist Robin M?ller received the Toronto
IODE Children's Book
In the Children's Book
Award for his recent book The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
"The pub
Centre's Bookviews
(vol. 8, no. 4, March 1986) M?ller commented:
lic already knows the title, of course, and there are a number of different ver
sions of it. It's a literary theme. The children realize that the story isn't about
Canadian
magic
literacy: Reading-writing
experiences
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149